


Into the Fire

by did_someone_say_plums



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-25 09:44:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14974523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/did_someone_say_plums/pseuds/did_someone_say_plums
Summary: Eleanor Wolfe hadn't seen Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes since the 40s but all of that changes after SHIELDs classified files are released to the public.





	1. Way Down We Go

**Author's Note:**

> I posted the first chapter to this a few weeks ago but I hated it and deleted it, so here we are. I hope this is better than the absolute shit show that was my first upload of this! Let me know if this is something you want me to continue!

Walking towards her apartment building, Eleanor gave a cautionary glance behind her shoulder, an old habit that no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t seem break. Not seeing anything out of the ordinary she continued into the old, worn down building and up the stairs to her floor. She hurriedly unlocked her door, not wanting her neighbors to see her. 

The thin walls of her cheap apartment did nothing to drown out the noisy city around her. She could still hear the traffic noises below, the beeping of horns and wailing of police sirens invading her apartment along with the wailing of a baby coming from the apartment adjacent to hers. The apartment wasn’t much at all, but it was tucked away and Eleanor felt safe there. The luxury of a place that was hers and hers alone was something that Eleanor hadn’t been afforded in 70 years. The last place she had called home had been a small apartment in Brooklyn and even then it wasn’t hers alone and Hydra  _ certainly _ hadn’t provided her with anything more than a small, sterile room.

Her apartment had two rooms, three if you counted the living room and kitchen as separate. Her living room had a small, forest green couch that was beginning to tear along the edges with small, worn end tables on either side of it. One table held a lamp and the other supporting a pile of popular books from the last 70 years that she couldn’t be bothered to place on the bookshelf. There was a small, outdated TV opposite from the couch that the previous tenant had left behind, although Eleanor hadn’t touched it. The living room bled into the kitchen, the only separation being a counter with uneven stools that she used in place of a kitchen table. It was a tiny, cramped kitchen with brown, linoleum countertops and wood cabinets. The small window in the kitchen was dirty and paint peeling around the window sill, but Eleanor was grateful to have even that tiny window. The floor was the same throughout the whole apartment and was an old, vinyl wood that she imagined was once nice but was now scratched and chipped,the concrete below it exposed. The walls were an off white with obvious patches where spackling paste had been used to repair holes throughout the decades. Aside from her front door there were two other doors, one led into a bathroom and the other to her bedroom. The bedroom was small, the space only allowed for a bed and a desk but it was  _ hers _ and that’s all that mattered. 

Most of all Eleanor liked that she could hear whenever someone walked up the stairs outside her door, it made her feel like if someone ever  _ did _ come after her she would have a head start. Throwing her bag on the floor she made her way to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door and stared dejectedly into it. The only options she had were a bottle of mustard, a pack of pre-sliced cheese, and a 6 pack of beer. She shut the refrigerator door and opened the cabinet where she kept food, provided that she actually gone grocery shopping. Not finding any options better than the cheese and mustard and closed the cabinet and leaned against the counter crossing her arms and letting out a sigh, cursing herself for not buying groceries earlier when she was out. 

Eleanor tried to limit the amount of times she left her apartment to once per day in an effort to limit the number of times her neighbors saw her. She was careful to leave at times she knew her neighbors were either at work or out running errands, the less people that knew she lived here the better off and safer she was. She never ordered delivery to her apartment for this very reason. She _ highly _ doubted that any of her neighbors worked for Hydra, but random people delivering food to her apartment she couldn’t be so sure about. She took comfort in the fact that Hydra thought she was dead, she had SHIELD to thank for that.  They had placed her in Berlin about a year ago with a new identity, Hannah Frederick. Hannah Frederick was a 23 year old American college student studying in Germany, or at least that’s what her neighbors and landlord thought. Eleanor had only met her landlord and neighbors next door once and she had worked hard to keep it that way. 

Her debate on whether she wanted to risk another trip out or go hungry for the night was seemingly decided by the insistent growling from her stomach. She let out a sigh of defeat and made her way to the door, grabbing her bag off of the counter and passing her unused television.  _ Had  _ Eleanor decided to turn on the TV that day, she would have been aware of what had been happening in Washington D.C over the past few days and she would have been aware of the fact that the organization that had made her life hell for 70 years was the very same organization that had placed Hannah Frederick in Berlin.

Steve Rogers sat on the couch in the safe house with his head in his hands, not knowing how to process the information that he had received. Not only was  _ Bucky’s  _ file open in front of him, but a file sat next to it that he hadn’t quite built up the nerve to continue reading. The name Eleanor Wolfe glared up at him. Eleanor was alive.  _ Ellie was alive.  _  He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, his mind dragging him back to the last time he had seen her.

_ The Hydra base hadn’t seemed any different than the last few they had taken down. They had grabbed a file from a Hydra base that filled in the missing details that they had needed in order to find a classified base about ten miles North and Steve and the rest of the Howling Commandos were ecstatic, everyone except for Ellie. She said it was too easy and she questioned why this file in particular had been missed while the rest of the classified files had been destroyed. Steve brushed off her concerns, this was the big break they needed. He should have listened, he should have listened to her when she said that something didn’t seem right. He should have listened when she said it was too easy. _

_ Hydra had grown wise to the way that the Howling Commandos operated and had purposely left the information behind. They were waiting for them. Steve replayed that night over and over again for months. He couldn’t erase the fear in her eyes from his mind. _

He shook his head and glanced at her file one more time as if it would have changed in the last ten minutes he had been sitting there. It still read the same. Eleanor was  _ alive.  _ He had only just accepted the fact that Bucky was alive, but now  _ Ellie _ ? Steve lifted his head and stared at Fury who was sitting across from him.

“How long did you know?”

“How long did I know what?”

Steve sighed and looked at Sam who was sitting beside him on the other end of the couch before looking back to Fury. “How long did you know Eleanor was alive?” 

“You’re just assuming I  _ knew  _ she was alive.”

“You had the highest level of security clearance. The only thing you didn’t know about was Hydra. How. Long.” Steve leaned back into the couch, crossing his arms and staring expectantly at Fury. 

Fury sighed and leaned his elbows on his knees, knowing that Steve wasn’t going to like the answer to his question. “She came to me about two years before we found you.”

Steve stood up from his seat on the couch. “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“It wasn’t. My. Decision.” Fury said while standing up from his seat as well. “She figured that the less people that knew, the better off she would be. She specifically told me not to tell you.”

Steve sat back on the couch, running a hand through his hair. “Why would she do that?” 

“I suggest you read her file.” Fury said while also sitting back in his chair, the situation seemingly diffusing.

Steve grabbed her file off of the table and stared at it, words like Hydra and Red Room jumping back up at him sending shockwaves through his body.

Steve closed his eyes, he didn’t want to read her file. He knew what happened to her wasn’t his fault, he didn’t do these things to her but he couldn’t help but feel even just a  _ little bit  _ responsible. His mind jumped to Bucky. Bucky had been inconsolable after they lost Ellie. He didn’t know how he was going to tell Bucky that Ellie was still alive.

Steve looked back down at her file but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t bring himself to read it. He took deep breath and looked up at Fury. “Where is she now?”

Eleanor locked her apartment behind her and walked down the stairs, her mind focused on what she wanted to pick up for dinner. She turned left out of her building and began walking down the street of the busy city, vaguely noticing a man push himself off of the wall and begin to follow her.

She tried to not think much about it, she tried to convince herself that she was being paranoid. She had no reason to believe that he was following her. She didn’t know about the recent developments in D.C. She continued down the street, hoping that the man following her wasn’t in-fact following her and that he was harmless. Her gut told her he wasn’t harmless but she still held onto the hope that he was harmless and that she was being paranoid. 

That hope dissolved when she slightly sped up her pace, weaving in and out of the crowd and glanced over shoulder, noticing that he sped up with her. She turned her head back to the front and began searching for an escape route when she noticed another man on the other side of the street dressed in all black, similar to the man tailing, her who had his eyes trained on her, making an effort to match his pace to hers. She sped up, trying to lose the man tailing her but to no avail. 

She made a sharp turn into an alley that she knew would take her closer to an escape route only to see a man standing at the end of it. Her heart dropped and she turned to escape only to find the man from before blocking her path. 

The two men began to converge on Eleanor and she began to realize that she wasn’t going to get out of this without a fight. 

She ducked as one of the men threw a punch at her, sweeping her leg out and knocking his legs out from under him. She stood up and whipped around and aimed her fist for the other mans face only to have him grab her fist and twist her arm back behind her. She kicked her leg out and knocked the other man back onto the ground, inwardly wincing as she heard his head smack against the ground. Eleanor twisted her body and freed herself from the man's grip, she threw punch after punch and he blocked each one. 

She finally got one good hit in on him and he went stumbling back into the brick wall of the alleyway, hitting his head against the solid wall. Eleanor took of at a sprint, spotting a parking garage across the street. She ran in, spotting someone getting into their car.

“Sorry!” She yelled as she yanked the poor guy out of his car, slamming the door and peeling out of the parking spot. She took off, crashing through the gate blocking her exit and ignoring the protests of the guard.

Eleanor wove in and out of traffic and looked in her rear view mirror in time to see a black van speeding to catch up to her.

“Shit.” She reached into her pockets and found her phone, pressing one of the only numbers in her contacts list.

“Fury, it’s Eleanor. I need your help.”


	2. Come Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I like this chapter a lot better than the first one and I hope you guys do to! Let me know if you guys want me to keep continuing this!

**_Brooklyn - 1942_ **

_ Ellie made her way down the street towards the diner, looking forward to the weekly tradition that her, Bucky, and Steve had started about a year ago. Steve wasn’t coming tonight, but that was just as well. Ellie would take any alone time with Bucky that she could get. It was rare that he didn’t have some girl hanging off his arm, a fact that routinely set a different kind of sadness in Ellie, a type of sadness that she wasn’t used to. _

_ Of course she had a thing for him, every girl in Brooklyn did. How could she not? His green eyes and lopsided smile could melt any girls heart. She didn’t know him as the ladies man that others knew him for. She knew him as the caring man that went out of his way to cheer her up after a bad day. She knew him as the man that would bring her medicine and make her soup when she was sick. She knew him as the man that one time beat the shit out of her date when he tried to force himself on her.  She knew she wasn’t his type, she knew he didn’t see her as anything more than a friend. He loved her, but not in the way she wanted. Not in the way she loved him. _

_ Bucky thought the same thing she did. He thought she only saw him as a friend. She was perfect and he thought she deserved so much better than him. _

_ She walked in and scanned her eyes across the diner, her heart fluttering and a smile spreading across her face when she spotted Bucky. He had picked a table towards the back of the diner, different than their usual table towards the front. He hadn’t noticed her yet, he was too preoccupied with fidgeting with a piece of paper he held in front of him. Ellie made her way towards the back, weaving her way in and out of the tables. She sat down, startling him.  _

_ He jumped, his eyes going wide. “Christ Ellie, give a guy some warning.” _

_ “Awe come on Barnes, didn’t know ya scared so easy.” Ellie laughed, a sound that always brought joy to Bucky. If he had it his way he would hear that sound every day for the rest of his life. _

_ Bucky would have usually given a smile or said something right back to her, but this time he didn’t. Ellie frowned, growing concerned. It seemed like Bucky was always smiling or laughing about something. He frowned down at the paper in his hands. _

_ “What’s that?” Ellie nodded towards the folded piece of paper. _

_ Bucky cleared his throat, setting the paper down on the table. “I um, it’s,” _

_ “Come on, spit it out. It can’t be that bad.” _

_ “Steve and I went down to the recruitment center today.” _

_ Ellies heart sank. “Bucky,” _

_ “Steve was classified as 4F, so you won’t have to worry about him. I kinda figured it’d turn out that way, poor guys got so many health issues, don’t tell him I said that. I’m kinda glad, didn’t wanna leave you here alone y'know? Don’t tell him I said that either,” _

_ She swallowed the lump in her throat, looking down at her hands and refusing to look at him. “James,” The use of his full name got his attention. “Stop rambling, you always do that when you’re avoiding something.” _

_ “I was drafted.” _

_ Her breath caught in her throat and she fought back the tears stinging in her eyes. From the minute he started rambling she knew that’s what he was going to say but hearing him say it only made it worse, a million times worse. _

_ She looked up at him. “James, no,” _

_ He flashed her a lopsided smile, trying to reassure her. “Hey, you’ll be just fine now. When have you ever had to worry about me?” _

_ If she was telling the truth, she always worried about Bucky. She worried about him when he started that job at the docks. She worried about him during his boxing tournaments. She worried about him whenever he and Steve got into their usual trouble. She looked at him, giving him a small smile in return “Always. I always worry about you.” _

_ His smile softened and his heart jumped at her confession. She worried about him, she thought about him. His heart fluttered at even the slightest chance of her returning feelings for him. It occurred to him that when he left, he might never see her again, that there was a chance he may never come back. He took a minute to study her, to memorize her, to burn this moment into his memory. He committed to memory her green eyes that now had a sadness to them that hadn’t been there when she first sat down. He memorized the way that her brown hair softly framed her face. He memorized the way that her light blue dress hugged her in all the right places. He memorized the shape of her lips and imagined how they would feel against his. She was perfect. He had spent so much time trying to find a girl who made him feel the things he did when he was around her. Someone who made ignited butterflies in the pit of his stomach the way she did. It was time wasted, time he could have been spending with her.  _

_ He had to tell her. He had to tell her before he lost his nerve. “Hey Ellie, I need to tell you,” _

_ “What can I get you two kids to eat?” Bucky glared at the waitress, an older lady with grey hair, and he swore that he had never hated anyone more. _

_ “I think I’ll have a milkshake,” He tuned Ellie out, slipping back into his thoughts. _

_ Just like that, his nerve was gone. How could he even think for a second that she could return his feelings? He was better off leaving their relationship as is. Things were good, they were friends. Best friends even. He didn’t want to leave things awkward between them if she didn’t return feelings.  _

_ “What were you saying Buck?” _

_ “It’s nothing, it can wait until later.” _

**_70 Years Later_ **

It had been three months. Three whole months since Steve had learned Ellie was alive and he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that both Ellie  _ and  _ Bucky were alive. He stared at the screens in front of him, three months and they had barely made any progress on locating either of them.

Natasha took a seat next to Steve, exhausted after investigating another dead end lead on Ellie’s location. “How do you even know she’ll recognize you, Steve? She could be just like Barnes.” 

“She’s not. Fury said she’s not.”

She let out a sigh, “He also said she didn’t want you to know she was alive. She wouldn’t do that without a reason.”

Steve focused on the controls of the quinjet. Why wouldn’t Ellie want him to know? Did she blame him for leading her into that Hydra base?  He blamed himself, why wouldn’t she? He was the one that made the call, he was the one who didn’t listen to her when she said something was off. 

Taking a deep breath, he turned to Natasha. If they couldn’t find Ellie yet, then he could at least track down more Hydra agents.  “How do you feel about the intel on Hydra agents in Brussels?”

Ellie couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t relax. She was on edge, more wound up than she had been since she left Hydra. She had been holed up in an abandoned building, miles away from any major city. If she was being honest she didn’t really know where  _ exactly  _ she was, she knew she was in Belgium but beyond that she had no clue. Fury had directed her out of Berlin and to a safe house a few miles away but beyond that he couldn’t help her, he no longer had any way to help her  _ and  _ keep her identity and exact location secret. 

She didn’t feel safe no matter where she went. Hydra wasn’t supposed to be able to find her, ever. She had tried so hard to get away from Hydra, to break away from their hold. She had spent so much time trying to heal, trying to forget everything Hydra did to her, everything she had done and despite all of her efforts it felt like she was right back where she started, backed into a corner by Hydra. 

Ellie didn’t know where to go next.  She was careful never to stay in one place for more than a few days. She had denied Fury’s offer of help. Not only was she running from Hydra, she was running from Steve and she couldn’t trust Fury not to tell Steve now that he knew. It’s not that she hated Steve or didn’t miss him, it was quite the opposite actually. She missed Steve so much it hurt. He was the closest thing she had to family, the only connection she had to her life before Hydra, before the war. Steve was the only connection she had to the nights Steve, Bucky, and her would spend at the docks, staring out at the water. Steve was the only connection she had to their weekly dinners at the diner down the street. Steve was the only connection she had to the times the three of them would save up money and go to Coney island. Steve was it. He was all she had, Ellie didn’t know what had happened to Bucky. Hydra hadn’t let her anywhere close to their files and she hadn’t had any way to get a hold of all of the leaked files. So as far as Ellie knew, Steve was it. 

So why was she running? Why was she  _ so afraid  _ of Steve finding her? The thought of being face to face with Steve sent her body into a panic. She wasn't the same person Steve knew. She wasn’t the Ellie that he had lost 70 years ago. She wasn’t the Ellie that would cook dinner for both him and Bucky and do their laundry. She wasn’t the same Ellie that would come and patch him up after he lost yet another fight with some jackass. She wasn’t his best friend anymore. She was a product of Hydra, a monster. Ellie no longer saw herself as a person, no, she wasn’t someone deserving of a future or any sort of happiness. Any sort of happiness or pleasure she felt was tinged with the guilt she felt for all of the horrors she was responsible for. Hydra had treated her as property, as a  _ thing _ , and they had conditioned her to view herself the same way. bShe had killed people, innocent people. People who had families, friends, jobs, a whole life and future ahead of them. If Steve had her file then he knew, he knew  _ everything _ and she didn’t know if she could face him, could look him in the eye now that he knew everything she had done, everything she was responsible for. Ellie thought that if she kept running, if Steve never saw her today, then he would be able to pretend like her file wasn’t really about  _ her _ , that it was a different Eleanor Wolfe. He could keep the image of Ellie before the war in his mind.  She didn’t want him to hate her.

Packing up the rest of her stuff she made her way to the car she stole on her way out of Germany. Heading to Brussels was her best bet to finding a way out of Europe. The GPS built into the SUV told her she had a little over an hour until she would reach Brussels. She started down the long, empty road anxious to get away from the abandoned farmhouse. She had stayed there almost a whole month, the longest she had stayed anywhere since Hydra had found her and she was paranoid that the people living in the neighboring farm were starting to get suspicious. 

The farther she traveled down the road the more signs of civilization she began to see. She saw a gas station up ahead and glanced down at her gas gauge, relieved to find that she still had half a tank. The less stops she made the better the chance she had of not being found, by Hydra or by Steve. Half a tank was plenty of gas to get her to Brussels where she then planned to ditch it. She had been using it for too long anyway. 

Ellie didn’t know what she expected to find in Brussels. There was no way she could leave the country and get into America with any of the passports supplied to her by SHIELD, she was almost positive that both Hydra and Steve would both be watching for any of her aliases to be used. If she  _ really  _ wanted to leave, she would need a new passport with an entirely new identity, something that she couldn’t get without help. Getting a fake passport wouldn’t be a fast process, she would have to lay low in Brussels. The thought of having to lay low in a big city scared her. It was harder to remain anonymous, harder to be invisible. 

Glancing at her GPS and seeing that she was only five minutes out of Brussels she took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. She didn’t even know where to start. Where would she stay? She didn’t know anyone in Brussels, she didn’t have any connections whatsoever. Beginning to regret her decisions she thought briefly about calling Fury. Sure he was in hiding himself, but he had to know of  _ someone  _ who could help her, right? Could she really risk it? There was no guarantee that Fury wouldn’t tell Steve where she was.  Ellie pulled into the first parking garage she could find, parking the SUV in the very back. She grabbed her bag out of the passenger seat and threw the keys back into the car, not bothering to lock it. The sound of the car door shutting echoed through the empty garage as she made her way out into the city.

Steve and Natasha had arrived in Brussels roughly two hours before Ellie. They both had time to kill before Sam and Wanda arrived to help them take down the small cell of Hydra agents that were holed up just outside of the city. Natasha had found a small cafe with outdoor seating and was insistent on it being the perfect spot to wait for Sam and Wanda. Steve tried to relax but he couldn’t help but be impatient. He had spent so much time working for SHIELD. He had trusted them, trusted nearly everyone in SHIELD. To have them turn out to be Hydra, the same organization that he now knew took both of his best friends, killed him. It filled him with a rage he hadn’t felt in years. 

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Would you sit still? You’re driving me insane.” 

“Sorry, how long do you think until Sam and Wanda get here?”

“Probably not long. Don’t worry, I don’t think they’re going anywhere. Those bastards will still be there when Sam and Wanda show up.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

Natasha sighed, “Anyway, as I was saying,”

Steve tuned out Natasha. She had been rambling on about past missions for what seemed like hours now. He loved Nat, he really did, but he was having a hard time paying attention to what she was saying. No matter how hard he tried his mind kept wandering to the current mission. The realization that Hydra was still active stung and in his mind the more Hydra agents he took out, the better. Steve begun scanning the crowds, it seemed pointless at times but it gave him comfort to know who was around him. It was a precaution he always took. Looking across the street, Steve’s heart stopped and his breath caught in his throat, his eyes now trained on a girl standing at the crosswalk across the street waiting for the light to turn. It couldn’t be her. It seemed impossible. He stood up from his seat to try and get a better look above all of the cars. Sure enough, it was her _.  _ It was  _ Ellie _ . He would recognize her anywhere, she looked almost exactly the same as she did that day. What was she doing in Brussels? The last lead they had on her had placed her in Portugal. It couldn’t be her, he had to be going crazy. He had been under a lot of stress lately, he had to be hallucinating. 

“Nat,” She continued her rambling. “Natasha,”

“What? Why do you keep interrupting me?”

“It’s her. It’s Eleanor.”

“What do you mean?”

Natasha stood up and looked to where Steve was looking. Nat spotted Ellie as she started crossing the street towards them, oblivious to the fact that they were sitting there, watching her.

“Holy shit.”

Ellie looked up after she had crossed and began scanning the crowds again. She froze when she saw Steve, panic surging through her body. How did he find her? Why was he here? This had to be some sick joke. She had been careful, there was no  _ way _ he could have found her. He started walking towards her, closing in on her. Her eyes darted between Steve and the redhead standing slightly behind him.

“Ellie?”

  
  



End file.
